Let me say this right off the bat: I don’t blog for the sake of hits, views and/or statistics. My blog’s numbers are nothing to write home about but nevertheless I have a personal obsession with constantly checking the stats everyday. I’ve had several conversations with several bloggers and non-blogging civilians, all of who tell me in that cliche way: “you shouldn’t blog for the stats”. Of course I don’t blog for the stats. I blog because I blog. Stats are not a sign of popularity to me but they do provide me with a lot of interesting information everyday. Where people come from, what post is popular, maybe a little insight into why it’s popular; that sort of thing. There’s also a bit of affirmation and/or validation to it: higher numbers in the context of a year indicate that you have a larger audience, a louder microphone and a bigger platform. My first few months of blogging lingered in the 100 hits a day average. Today it teeters over the 1k mark. Good? Bad? Silly?
None of that matters to be honest.
When it comes to that daily number, and I don’t speak for everyone, but for me personally it’s very much like a video game high score I just have to beat. That’s basically it. But this is in part because I’m around a computer everyday for the longest time. Whenever I happen to orbit away from this solar system, all of this vanishes completely from my mind. Then again, in that situation even blogging doesn’t matter at all.
So you check your stats everyday but only once? 😀
Shaden: huh?
nice blog, keep writing for whos reading your posts 🙂
Bravo Nas, I am in that number. So, don’t stop presenting news and ideas from yourpartculat viewpoint, ok?
Amr: Thanks, and will do 🙂
Kinzi: I’m glad you are. And will do. 🙂
“Whenever I happen to orbit away from this solar system, all of this vanishes completely from my mind.”
Really? You never get some interesting thought while your away from this computer and then think to yourself “I’m going to write about this today”? Or you never catch yourself thinking to yourself in the blogger tone of voice, i mean like your speaking in narrative to yourself? hmm maybe you are not obsessed enough.
Naseem,
I never check my stats for the very reason you mentioned about being like a game score that you have to beat. I am so obsessed with highscores and improvement that I fear I would some how damage my integrity if I have “score” in the back of my mind while blogging.
I keep worrying about becoming a comment or stats wh*re, and ending up writing whatever gets me a higher “score”.
I do however consult a statiscs service everytime I rearrange my site, and must say that my numbers are nowhere as high as yours. I am actually a total noob compared to you.
I want to be popular, but would like to be popular and still have something interesting and genuine to say (sort of like this site).
Btw, this blog is #1 on my list. Better keep doing it.
PS: I need your help, I have this unheard of singer Im hoping you could help identify. Check my site and remove this part of the comment if you want to.
lksfadljk: “Really? You never get some interesting thought while your away…”
Oh yeah, that happens all the time. But I meant when I’m away from a computer for a lengthy period of time like a month…vacation for example. There’s a withdrawal phase.
Sari: Stats are deceiving, they don’t always indicate popularity. Sometimes you write enough posts that cover enough subjects that lead to good indexing from the search engines.
Also, the song, I think I replied to you about that in another post where you brought it up but i forget which it was.